A Bright Shining Pile of . . .
Demon Baby's favorite word . . . CRAP!
Over on J.A. Konrath's blog is a great post about when you give up on a book. I actually think it's pretty brilliant advice and very much realistic and dead-on. But if you go to the comments, the third one down had me laughing out loud--with recognition.
I think everyone at some point writes a bright, shining, beautiful pile of crap. Everyone has, somewhere (heck, maybe you're even submitting it!), a book with the best character ever and dialogue that belongs on the silver screen. In my case, it would be dialogue directed by this man. If you don't know his films, suffice it to say they are "quirky." I'd like to MARRY Wes Anderson or at least have cocktails. I love his films, and they aren't everyone's taste, but in my bright, shining piles of crap, everyone talks like they are in a Wes Anderson film--and I wrote dialogue this way long before I even knew Wes Anderson existed.
Bright, shining piles of crap don't go anywhere. They don't do anything but sit there shining in their faux-brilliance. They don't MOVE. There's no forward propulsion.
Crap doesn't have a point. Except to amuse itself. Or, if you writer horror, scare yourself. Or if you write sci-fi, dazzle yourself. It very frequently has plot holes that the writer doesn't see because he or she was so blinded by the quirky, wonderful, scary, funny, or genius quality of the main character.
Crap is often colorful. Ask any mother of a baby with technicolored-poop. (Why is my baby's poop GREEN? is one of the most common questions asked by new moms everywhere!). Colorful crap exists just to admire its uniqueness.
Finally, writers are often excessively in love with the bright, shining piles. There IS something there. There is! I can tell you for sure, your crap and mine . . . there is something there and you know it. The main character, the sidekick, the hook. Something's there. But it's not a book. Or not a good enough book.
Maybe it's that last one. It's just not good enough. And so you abandon the bright, shining pile because you learned something. Maybe someday you will even resurrect it. Maybe you'll use the sidekick in another book.
But for now, know that is why it's being rejected. We all have one of these in our harddrive somewhere.
Thoughts?
P.S. And if you haven't visited the Demon Baby blog lately . . . know the kid doesn't just love the word "crap"--he now spins it into its own language. We have craptastic, crapalicious . . . and finally, his new word . . . CRAPPLE! (Which is actually a SONG he made up. ) As the Demon Madonna, I never cease to be amazed at the depths of his evil genius.
25 comments:
I think we all do, yes.
I also think sometimes ... sometimes, if you wait long enough, it turns into, er, well, not gold, but fertilizer, maybe. (Hey, it's your metaphor).
Just imagine Orson Wells saying: We shall sell no story before its time.
Hi Mark:
Yeah. I think sometimes it can be rescued, but sometimes it just remains too much a pile of dialogue--clever, shining, brilliant dialogue--with no real forward movement.
But I've rescued crap once or twice, usually by inserting a better plot/hook.
E
hahahahahahaha I LOVE Demon Baby. OMG seriously if I wasn't so set on no kids ever, I'd want my very own demon spawn just like him!
Ha!
and yes, I have a POS book, and I'm right now plundering it for other books. Sad in a way. But not.
Though I have no doubt I'll reuse part of in in a future book cause the prologue is just too delicious and darkly wonderful. IMO. But that could be the shiny crap talking. If I'm not totally sure about it, I'll make it a free ebook later.
zoe:
I have plundered a book or two before!
E
Sometimes it's fun to look back on old crap, though, isn't it?
Somewhere I have pages from years ago--written in longhand--about a theme park called TimeWorld, where customers are put into a drug-induced dream state and "travel" to computer-generated time periods of their choice. Talk about a gleaming pile of crap that went nowhere!
Of course, maybe if I added some vampires from outer space to the mix...
Jude:
Um . . . no. Even vampires won't fix that. ;-)
E
No, Jude. You need zombie Meerkats to fix that.
My dog ate a bright blue toy once. Yep. Bright blue crap.
I have a couple of novels I learned on - one MG fantasy and one edgy YA. I may unearth the YA someday and do something with it. but the MG is a trunk novel forever. They were the crap in my training pants - so to speak.
sarah:
I knew all the crap stories would be trotted out. LOL!
:-)
E
Sarah:
P.S. I showed my Baby Girl your wedding pictures on your blog. She thought you were bother beautiful--and loved the dogs!
I submitted a poc to a publisher and got a contract for it. Said publish is now defunct and my ms never saw light of day.
Moral: Even the universe knows a POC when it rears it's crappy head.
kath:
LOL! I am sure you didn't feel that way at the time, though! We gain wisdom on our own crap with distance.
E
Zombie meercats! I better get to work!!!
Actually Jude,
I think you would call that story "Total Recall" or perhaps, if you're old enough, "Future World " or "West World."
Mark:
Yeah, like Total Recall meets The Time Machine.
With space vampires and zombie meercats.
I recently read my POS and decided, that yes, it's a POS. Further review may be necessary...
Jude:
I need to get me a zombie meerkat.
E
This had me laughing, E. My first novel is untouchable, as in I'll never put my paws on it's onion-skined paper-hide in this lifetime. I know, guilty of using the wrong type of paper too.
The virgin novel is stashed in a canvas tote somewhere, and it's pathetic. The opening secene has a widower gazing at the ocean, and I spent two paragraphs describing the crescendo of waves, and glitter of moonlight on its surface as it crashed the rocks. Of course he was drinking a brandy on the rocks at the time, and this broody man was interrupted by his maid. Ah, such is life.
But hey, after page 70, I was hoppin'. LOL. Straight to hell on that one.
I need to get me a zombie meerkat.
I don't know, Erica. I've heard they don't get along that well with demon babies.
I had to throw away my early work, including two complete novels, because I blushed so badly whenever I looked at it. I had a fear I would be hit by a train and my relatives, picking through my things, would sit around snickering at my inane prose and shallow characters.
Finally! I have had blogger issues ALL DAY. Talk about dealing with crap -- but that's another post.
Realizations like one's work is crap scares the crap out of me. I'd rather know sooner than later. Do you think anyone sending their ms to an agent or editor thinks it's crap?
Or is one man's crap, another man's best seller?
LaDonna, I love your story! LOL But if you hadn't had created that beauty you'd never have anything to measure today's treasures.
Erica wrote:right, shining piles of crap don't go anywhere. They don't do anything but sit there shining in their faux-brilliance.
This is pretty much how I feel about all books classified as "literature."
Stephen:
LOL! I destroyed my journals for the same reason.
E
Amy:
I very much thing people submit KNOWING there are things wrong, but not knowing how to fix them and believing it's "as good as" what's published. I had one guy I was editing tell me it was all about the "big idea' and the writing--the actual craft--was incidental. People like that are hopeless.
E
Karm:
But then, I read Margaret Atwood or The Kite Runner . . . adn that's just not true. It's brilliant, but not faux brilliance. Not all brilliance is pretentious. And very, very little that is pretentious is brilliant.
E
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